Chapter 2 – This Sucks

“Hello, Clay, I’m standing outside Eurobank in the heart of downtown, where all hell has just broken loose!”

The reporter is pretty and well-kept, a typical TV talking head, but there is nothing typical about the scene behind her. At least twenty police cars surround a building with gaping holes where huge glass windows used to be. Muzzle flashes strobe from the dark depths of the building; machine gun fire chews at the cruisers as cops huddle behind the vehicles for cover. A beam of red coherent light flashes into being, connects one of the cars to the bank for just an instant, and then the car explodes.

The reporter’s face wears a practiced look of Deep Concern, but the white knuckles gripping the microphone betray her true panic. “Twenty minutes ago, police units responded to a silent alarm here, where they found…”

She yelps as the ground belches under her feet, pitching her to the side. Pavement buckles and cracks, forming a raised line that extends toward the bank. You wouldn’t be surprised if Bugs Bunny suddenly popped up through the ground, complaining about a “wrong toin at Albakoikie,” but it doesn’t happen. Instead, the mole trail collides with the brick wall of the building, causing a broad section to collapse, revealing a flash of silver within.

The reporter staggers to her feet. She looks at the trail of raised earth, then at something just off-camera, probably the cameraman. “Was… was that…?”

She shrieks and ducks as a man in red-and-green spandex leaps over her head and bounds toward the bank. As he nears the gaping hole in the wall, more machine gun fire chatters, and he falls to the ground.

The reporter looks at the body for a moment, then turns to the cameraman again.

“Is that it?”

######

Flexo the Rubber Man sat up with a groan. Bullets just bounced off him, or maybe it was he that bounced off them, but they hurt either way. One had struck just a couple of inches from his yarbles; too close for comfort. He staggered to his feet and started to rub the spot, but then he remembered that he was on camera and pulled his hand away. He moved to his right, out of the direct line of fire from the building.

Not an auspicious start to a superhero career, he thought, but then, he hadn’t expected Digger to charge in ahead of him like that. They were supposed to go in together and draw the villains outside, away from their hostages and into full view of the cameras, where they would defeat them in spectacular fashion.

Then again, had Digger charged in? The man made a huge racket when he was at work, and there was still only the sound of sporadic gunfire. So where had he gone?

Conscious of the eyes on his back, Flexo moved forward again. He didn’t like the idea of facing two powered criminals alone, but if the assault rifles were the worst they had, then he’d be okay. He just had to make an evasive approach, run in serpentine patterns, throw in a few acrobatics. Sneaking up on them would be a smarter idea, but his contract with PlayCo Inc. (a division of SunMarc) wouldn’t allow it.

He ran toward the breach in the wall at an oblique angle. It was dark in the bank; someone had killed all the lights. A knot of hostages sat on the floor back by the teller windows. Flexo counted four or five gunmen–hard to tell if the guy in the corner was real or a trick of the light–plus a woman in a dark jumpsuit standing next to a huge metallic creature with a scorpion-shaped body and the torso of a man emerging from the front like an insectoid centaur. He looked familiar. PlayCo had made Flexo study hundreds of villain dossiers to prepare for action, but he’d never been a very good memorizer. The guy’s name was Scorpion-Something, or Something-Scorpion.

One of the gunmen turned his head and noticed Flexo’s approach. As the thug turned to fire, Flexo cut the other way, aiming for cover behind a desk he could see just inside the opening in the wall. He started a tumbling run and prayed he didn’t muff it in front of the cameras. PlayCo had hired a gymnastics coach to give him some flair, but eight weeks was not long enough to completely train the reflexes.

He did a series of backflips as the assault rifle fired, and when he thought he was close enough to the desk, he threw in a high twisting finish. A couple of the bullets found him in mid-air and added momentum to his spin.

Instead of landing behind the desk, he slammed right into it. The desktop’s edge dug into his ribs as his flexible bones warped to match the desk’s contours. They sprang back to normal a moment later, flinging him onto the floor. He scrambled to his feet to find five rifles trained on him (so that guy in the corner was real), as well as the attention of the jump-suited woman and the scorpion-thing. Everyone stared at him, including the hostages, their eyes wide with fear.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Something-Scorpion.

“I’m Flexo Thompson, the Amazing Rubber Man, and I’m making a citizen’s arrest.” He thought the name was too long–he had suggested simply Rubberman–but the media consultant PlayCo hired to coordinate the launch had insisted that Full-Name-Plus-Descriptive-Phrase worked best. The proper name would make people relate to him better, the consultant said, and the last name would give his name some rhythm. Besides, Rubberman would make people think of condoms, which was not a good way to sell toys.

“Never heard of you,” said the woman with an accent he couldn’t place. She carried no gun, but had complicated metal gauntlets on her hands that ended in long curved claws. Flexo recognized her now; her name was Lady Talon.

“My show isn’t out yet.”

Lady Talon and Something-Scorpion exchanged a look and then burst out laughing. “What, are you one of those toy guys with the cartoons, like that Digger doofus?” asked Something-Scorpion. Silver Scorpion, that was it.

“Thirteen episodes, starting in September.” There would be more, Flexo hoped, but first the show had to get ratings, and more importantly, sell toys.

When he’d first gone to PlayCo six months ago and asked them to sponsor his hero career the way they did Digger’s, they hadn’t been impressed by his powers. But they’d seen the possibilities for a toy line and decided to take the chance. Now Flexo had to make sure that their investment paid off. That was why they had decided to team him with Digger. Digger was a proven commodity, an established ratings success. Where the hell was Digger, anyway?

“Well, I’d have you tell your bosses that your show is canceled, but you’ll be too dead to do it.” Silver Scorpion took a few steps away from the hostages and toward Flexo, the sharp clank of his metal legs on the granite tile ringing from the walls. Flexo braced to leap for cover as the tip of Silver Scorpion’s tail began to glow red.

There was a distant rumble, the ground began to shake, and then the floor exploded under Silver Scorpion in a geyser of dirt and shattered tile. Flexo was thrown from his feet by the eruption. As he rolled, he saw Silver Scorpion tumbling in the air, his tail laser firing wildly, cutting a jagged line across the floor and through one of his own henchmen. The screams of the henchman mixed with the screams of the hostages.

Flexo caught sight of a figure in blue-and-tan, rising into the air next to the Silver Scorpion. There was the boom of a second explosion before the first had completely faded, and the Silver Scorpion shot across the room to slam into the far wall.

Digger piked in the air like an Olympic diver and fell headfirst toward the ground, the metal blasters grafted to his arms catching the light from outside. “Get to work!” he shouted, and then there was another boom as the ground opened below him and he disappeared from sight.

The blasters were called Driller Beam Generators. Flexo wasn’t sure how they worked. They seemed to produce some sort of shock waves, like miniature explosions. However they worked, the force was focused in such a way that it would cut through whatever was in front of Digger, rather than blast him backwards. The blasts pulverized dirt and rock, shoved it aside and packed it tight to form a narrow tunnel that Digger could move through.

Flexo coughed in the swirling dust as he scrambled to his feet. Digger’s eruption had knocked down everyone in the bank, giving Flexo the opportunity to go after the others. He bounded toward the nearest gunman.

The gunman reacted quickly, rolled into a prone position to aim his assault rifle at Flexo. It was a good strategy to use against someone shooting back–present a smaller target while bracing your weapon for accuracy–but not so handy against someone like Flexo. He crouched low, felt his bones flex as he pushed off the ground, the spring in his bones giving his leap extra height. The gunman rolled onto his back to fire up, but Flexo came down on him before he could pull the trigger.

Flexo heard a crunch and a groan, but couldn’t check to see if he’d put the guy completely out of action. He was already bouncing toward the next thug, who was a little slower to get up than the others.

Across the room, Flexo saw Digger burst up from the ground–though the Drillers on his arms looked bulky and clumsy, Digger could dive in and out of the ground as gracefully as a leaping dolphin–punch out a thug, then disappear underground again as a burst of machine gun fire ripped the air where he’d been.

The thug in front of Flexo had finally made it to his feet, shaking his helmeted head. Flexo hyper-twisted his hips and launched a spinning kick that would put the guy right back on the ground again. Claws tore into Flexo’s shoulders and yanked him back, away from his target. He stretched his leg, hoping to connect, but failed; there was a reason he was named “Flexo” and not “Stretcho.”

He hit the ground in front of Lady Talon. Her claws were on wires that retracted into her gauntlets. They locked in place with a click. “Fool!” she shouted over the racket of another explosion and more machine-gun fire.

Flexo rolled to his feet, coughed in the clouds of dust Digger was kicking up. He felt hot blood soak into his uniform where her claws had dug into him. “You’ll…”

Bullets pounded into him, knocking him to the ground. He heard Lady Talon scream, saw her lying next to him. Claws shot out from her talon-gauntlet to tear into her helmeted henchman, the one Flexo had just missed with his kick. The man had apparently panicked and shot both Flexo and his boss. Now he had paid for his mistake.

“Fool!” Lady Talon shouted as she scrambled to her feet.

Flexo stood up, wincing. Bullets hurt. “You’ll call me worse than that from jail, lady.”

“Not you. Him!” She waved a hand at her fallen henchman. The claws retracted back to her gauntlets with a zzzzip!

“No, before that,” Flexo said. “You called me a fool before he shot us.”

Lady Talon gaped at him for a moment, looking lost. “No, I didn’t. I was talking about Silver Scorpion. Such a show-off. We couldn’t just take the money and run. No, we had to make a big production, blow up police cars. Now look what’s happened.”

There was another boom and a henchman flew past, arms and legs flailing. The dust in the air grew thicker. Flexo wiped sweat and grit out of his eyes. Next time, he would wear goggles. “Okay, but just to be clear, you weren’t calling me a fool?”

“Okay, fine, you’re a fool, too. You’re all fools! Dead fools!” She snarled and leaped to the attack, claws seeking out Flexo’s throat.

Flexo dodged back, but not far enough. Lady Talon’s claws tore bloody scratches across his forearms and chest; bullets bounced off his rubbery hide, but he could still be cut. The ground shook, throwing both of them off-balance, and Flexo used the opening to scramble away from her.

For the first time, Flexo wondered if he’d made a mistake getting into the hero game. He was totally outclassed here. Eight weeks of martial arts training hadn’t been nearly enough to prepare him for this. But Digger had just made everything look so easy, and Flexo had admired him so much…

Until he met him in person, anyway.

The real Digger had been a complete disappointment. Short, bitter, cynical, with his wrinkled uniform and perpetual slump. He had supposedly been one of the greats in his day, but all he seemed to care about now were movies and beer. Hell, Flexo had thought, if a guy like Digger could do this sort of thing, anybody could. But now he wasn’t so sure.

Lady Talon pressed her advantage, sensing Flexo’s fear. The claws on one hand shot out on their wires, dug into his shoulder to yank him forward, her other hand raised for a killing blow. Flexo saw triumph in her eyes.

Then she was hit by a shower of dirt and shattered rock. Lady Talon stumbled back sputtering, momentarily blinded.

Flexo leaped forward, twisting in the air like a figure skater. He grabbed his fist as he spun, yanked back on it as he cranked his shoulders the other way. His forearm bent at an obscene angle. When he let go, the fist snapped free like the jaws of a mousetrap, catching Lady Talon across the cheekbone. Her head snapped around, her eyes glazed over, and she crumpled to the ground.

“Good job.”

Flexo looked around to see Digger standing next to him. “She almost killed me! Why didn’t you stop her?”

“I did stop her,” Digger said. “Besides, I have this thing about hitting girls. Bad for my image.”

“Wait, what about my image?” Flexo asked. “Could something like this hurt my ratings?”

Digger gave Flexo a pitying look. “Dude, I’ve seen the show. The ratings weren’t going to happen anyway.”

“Wait, what…?”

The sound of an assault rifle being cocked echoed from the walls and ceiling. Flexo turned to see the Silver Scorpion next to one of the hostages, the barrel of the rifle pressed to her head. Tears glistened on the woman’s cheeks; Flexo didn’t want to know what was bubbling out of her nose. “Back off, heroes, or she dies,” the Scorpion growled.

“Okay, wait a second, don’t do anything crazy,” Flexo said. “Digger, what do we do?”

“This sucks,” Digger said. “Let’s bail.”

“What?”

“Dude, we got six out of seven. That’s a good score,” Digger said.

“Score?”

“Maybe ‘score’ is a bad choice of…”

“So you just want to let him go?”

“Yeah, he’s not worth the effort. Throw him back.”

“Hey!” said the Silver Scorpion.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Flexo asked.

“Hey! Hostage!” the Silver Scorpion said, hefting the rifle.

“I’m just saying, even if he goes free, all the rest of these guys go to jail. Net-net it’s a good…”

“I can’t believe you!” Flexo shouted.

“Hey!” Silver Scorpion yelled. “Shut up. I’m the one with the gun to the hostage’s head here!” He waved the rifle over his head for emphasis.

“There we go,” Digger said quietly.

Digger suddenly blurred into motion. He grabbed Flexo’s hair and yanked his head back as he drove a knee into Flexo’s spine. Flexo bent back at an impossible angle, and then the grip on his hair let go. Flexo snapped forward and flew through the air, felt Digger’s foot hit him in the back to give him added velocity. Before he knew what was happening, he hit Silver Scorpion’s arm, and then he was skidding and bouncing across the shattered floor with the rifle in his arms.

Silver Scorpion looked at his empty hand in shock, then at Flexo. Rage distorted his face, and he started to turn back toward Digger.

Boom! Flexo barely managed to duck his head as the Silver Scorpion went flying over him to crash through the wall into the street beyond.

Flexo looked back up to see Digger standing next to the crying hostage, smoke rising from the Drillers. He helped her to her feet and handed her off to an older woman, got all the hostages hastily aimed at the front exits. Then he turned to Flexo. “You okay, dude?”

Flexo got to his feet. “Yeah. So was that all just a put-on?”

“Of course,” Digger said. “That’s why I used the code.”

“What code?”

“This sucks. That’s the code for…” Digger closed his eyes and shook his head. “I forgot. You’re a newbie. You don’t know the code.”

“Yeah, maybe next time you should teach me the code before you use it.”

“Yeah, like that’s worth the effort,” Digger mumbled.

Flexo shook his head. Had he heard Digger right? “What?”

“Look, don’t sweat it right now,” Digger said. “Just chill in here while I go mop this guy up outside, and then we’ll talk about it over a beer, what do you say?”

Digger stepped through the hole in the wall, one arm shading his eyes. Used to the darkness underground, Digger wasn’t comfortable in full sunlight. Flexo followed him out. “No, we should do this together. I mean, isn’t that the point of this whole thing? Get me in the public eye?”

Down the street, the Silver Scorpion was unwrapping himself from a crumpled squad car. He stumbled sideways a few clanking steps before righting himself. Cops surrounded him at a wary distance with pistols and shotguns aimed.

“No,” Digger said. “The point of this whole thing was to save those people. Thanks for the diversion, by the way.”

“So that’s why you let me go in alone? As a diversion?”

The Silver Scorpion took two clanking steps toward Digger and Flexo. The tip of his tail began to glow red as he shouted, “Is that the best you’ve got?”

Digger held up one finger to the Scorpion. “One second. I’m talking.” He turned to Flexo. “Look, kid, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’ve been in this game a long time, so believe me when I say, you’re not a keeper.”

“Not a…”

“Don’t ignore me!” Flexo turned to see the tip of Silver Scorpion’s tail flaring brighter than he’d ever seen it before, power building with an ear-piercing whine, as if he were about to fire the mother of all laser blasts right at the two of them.

But then a shadow fell across the Silver Scorpion, and behind him in the street, people in the crowd were looking up and pointing. A bolt of lightning lanced down from out of the sky and hit the Silver Scorpion with an ear-shattering crack. The cyborg screamed as electricity coruscated around his body, then the scream was cut short as another police car slammed down on top of him.

Flexo looked up and saw two figures descending to earth. One was a red-haired woman well over six feet tall, in leather armor like some TV show barbarian queen, cut low to show off impressive cleavage. The other was a tall black man in a trenchcoat and hi-tech goggles, his head wreathed in smoke. Two hoverfans protruded from a complicated harness under the coat, and in one hand, he held a metallic rod that crackled with electricity.

Flexo recognized them from old photos: Valkyrie Princess and Doctor Jolt. They’d been teammates of Digger’s almost ten years ago, in Los Angeles, but they had retired when the team disbanded. They touched lightly to earth before Digger and Flexo. Doctor Jolt touched a stud on his harness, and the hoverfans folded away to hide themselves under his coat. Up close, Flexo could see that the smoke around his head came from the stubble on his scalp, which seemed to be constantly burning.

“Doctor J. Val. Thanks for the assist,” Digger said.

Valkyrie Princess inclined her head at the thanks. God, she was beautiful, Flexo thought. “You didn’t need it, but we figured what the hell.”

Digger glanced at Flexo, but didn’t offer any introductions. “So what brings you here?”

“I’ve got something going, and I want you in,” she said.

“That sounds dirty,” Digger said. “What is it, exactly?”

She smiled, her ice-blue eyes glittering with a deep and secret amusement. “We’re getting the band back together.”

She glanced at Doctor Jolt, who said nothing. She nudged him, and he sighed, then said, “We’re on a mission from God.”